A Sky Full of Kites: A Rewilding Story
By (Author) Tom Bowser
Birlinn General
Birlinn Ltd
11th October 2024
4th July 2024
New in B-Paperback
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Conservation of the environment
Animals and society
Energy and natural resources law
Animal husbandry
Rural communities
598.945094128
Short-listed for Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year 2022
Paperback
256
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 20mm
252g
Shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award
Red kites were once Britains most common bird of prey. By the early 1900s they'd been wiped out in Scotland and England following centuries of ruthless persecution. When some reintroduced kites began roosting on their 1,400-acre farm at Argaty in Perthshire, Tom Bowsers parents, Lynn and Niall, decided to turn their estate into a safe haven. They began feeding the birds and invited the world to come and see them, learn about them and fall in love with them.
A Sky Full of Kites is the story of the Argaty Red Kite project, and the re-establishing of these magnificent raptors to Scotland, but it is also much more than that. Ill at ease with the traditional rural values of livestock farming, Lynn and Nialls son Tom, who returned to work on the farm after a career in journalism, reveals his passion for nature and his desire to dedicate his familys land to conservation.
'An inspirational real-life story'
* Scots Magazine *'Imbued with the author's passion for nature, and his desire to dedicate his family's land to conservation'
* The Bookseller *'This book has plenty to tell us about the birds many of the best bits of this book are the historical references and the brief history of kites in literature and history'
* Scotland on Sunday *'An environmental story that gives hope, a story of a bird that was extinct doing really well on an estate thats trying to promote a different way of doing things'
* Dundee Courier *'A wonderful book'
-- Euan McIlwraith * BBC TV's Landward *'The story of how a farm was turned into a private wildlife reserve.hopefully more farmers will start to see wildlife as an asset, as this farm did'
* Birdwatcher Magazine *Tom Bowser grew up on his parents Perthshire farm. After university he worked as a teacher and then as a journalist before returning to Argaty in 2009. In 2017 he took over the running of the conservation project Argaty Red Kites, and in 2018 launched the Argaty Red Squirrels project.